One of the most flabbergasting things about Gulf Wars is the scale of the thing.  About 3800 people attended this year, and all of them wandering about, and the merchants, and the tents, and the melees…well, it’s bigger than any Rennaissance faire I’ve been to yet.  I took some pictures, trying to catch the scale, but as usual, I was not where most of the people were.  Click to enlarge.

This is the main road that goes through the activities area.  Those buildings are permanent, and they house some important people, or they’re bathhouses.

Same road, looking back towards Artisan’s Row, where the classes are held, and Hastings Field, where most of the fighting happens.  This woman in the foreground is wearing a Viking apron, which is a very popular outfit, and quite flattering to a larger body type.  (The letdown on break camp day when everybody was back to jeans and t-shirts was just awful.)

This is meant to be an example of how people bring real furniture (sometimes plywood thrones that disassemble) to establish camps.  My apologies again for the crummy photography – there weren’t very many people with cameras, and I felt like I had to sneak pictures, since it messed up the general ambiance.

Now we’ve left the activities area, and the camping area is in front of us.  This is the main crossroads of the site.  That gate on the left goes into a household called Marshin Fayne on my map, and I don’t know why it has fangs.  They hosted a costume party on the last night called "the Seven Deadly Sins".  I did not go – there was dancing instead!

One of the more successful gypsy wagons.  It would be very cool to put one of these together.

Two gates to different camps, Small Grey Bear and the Kingdom Trimaris (the rest of Florida).  And some portalets.



I’m trying to give you an idea here of density.  This is very urban camping.  The ravine on the right is the site of various melees throughout the wars, and I’ve got pics of the rapier one that I’ll put up later in the week.



And this is Maison des Animaux, the household that hosted me.  That’s the gate on the left, and the torches just inside with the campfire on the right.  You can see how many period tents are included, wedges mostly.  They have plywood floors to keep them drier.  But there are a couple of permanent cabins:



This is Targon and Elisabeta’s cabin.  It’s a ten foot square utility shed.  They’ve built a sleeping loft above the back portion, and store garb hanging underneath.  There’s a lovely screen built out of operating louvered shutters behind the couch to lend flexibility of privacy to the dressing area, and there’s a window back there too.  On the right of the door is a little kitchen, and the loveseat area is quite big enough to seat six on couch and chairs if it’s pouring outside.  I gave them a suggestion about how to rework the sleeping loft to give them more headroom (nest the mattress between paired rafters, with deck below instead of on top of rafters) and we talked about how to add a covered porch.



Our mundane tent, and our neighbor’s.  That’s the gate of Arenal (Pensacola) behind us, and that white roof behind us is a yurt!  There were lots of yurts at Gulf Wars, and I like them a lot.  Neat housing – with proper doors.  But I think I like the arming tent best, that I covered elsepost.